I got Lyme disease, dammit!

F

Foilist

Joined
Dec 20, 2004
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How many of you have had Lyme disease yet? It is quite common here (I live 30 miles from the town that is its namesake), but I have managed to avoid it until now. I guess my number came up, because I found myself in bed with fever, chills, headache, body aches, and nausea all of a sudden. The morning of the second day I suspected what it was, got on antibiotics, and now I'm back to myself on day four, except for some lingering fatigue. The key is to catch it early because it can be quite debilitating - and permanently so. I never saw the tick or the bite site or anything.

It got me thinking how serious something like this could be in a situation of long-term survival where antibiotics would not be available.
 
Foilist - I've had it three times, everybody in my house has had it at least twice, my twins are on antibiotics for it right now. The ticks that we are dealing with are so small and so plentiful in our area, it is hard to avoid. We takes ticks off of our kids every day:grumpy:
 
Its good to hear you are doing better and I hear if you take medicine right away you can be cured of it. I am from CT too and am very careful about ticks. I try and avoid walking through tall grass or sitting on the ground (I always try to sit on rocks or logs). When I get home I always take a shower and carefully look for ticks.

As I said, I'm glad to hear your back to your normal self.
 
Dude, that sucks. Glad you caught it early and are feeling better.

I'm sure its just a matter of time for me, I pull between 5 and 20 ticks off of me and my dog after every hike. My dog supposedly has been vaccinated against lyme disease. But as my vet was giving him the shot I asked her why they have a vaccine for dogs but not people. And she said that they had one for people but it just wasn't effective. That didn't give me a lot of confidence that the vaccine for my dog would be very reliable either. :grumpy:
 
Sorry to hear about the Lyme. Interesting to hear you guys up north discuss this. It got me thinking... it has probably been 10 years since I have had a tick. Even my dog doesn't get ticks anymore.

I'm not sure what cleared them out of our area, but a lot of the ol' timers, ranchers, farmers think it is due to our fire-ant invasion. The ants kill everything. Even whitetail fawns at times. I just don't think the ticks can survive with the fire-ants on the loose.
 
good to hear you are back on your feet.

my dad got it pretty bad about...ehh maybe 7 or 8 years ago. i think he waited like a week to go to the doctor, where he got antibiotics etc.

i wonder if it would be possible to get antibiotics from a doc and take them into the bush with you, but most antibiotics have to be refrigerated and taken careful care of, so maybe that wouldn't work well.

so far i haven't had it, and i don't have to pull too many ticks off of me (knock on wood) i think its just some people attract bugs more than others, and as body chemistry changes that changes for individuals too.
 
I also am glad you are getting better.

I've worried about Lyme for a long time, especially because I spend time on my hands and knees in the grass, etc., harvesting materials for cordage, arrows, basketmaking, etc.

I used to get checked once a year. Then one year my GP called me and said that there was now a vaccine available - Lymerix and that probably I should get the shots. I replied that perhaps I should wait and see how it goes to which he replied that it had been extensively used in Europe without mishap so there should be no problem.

So I went ahead with the shots. The regimen was one shot today, one a month from now and one a year from now. After shot #2 I read some disturbing reports in Backpacker magazine about side effects, etc. but I figured, WTH, I'm in for 2 might as well get the 3rd.

OK, to speed ahead to the 21st century :o , there has been a class action lawsuit against Smith, Kline, Beecham, the manufacturers of Lymerix. Apparently Lymerix could cause the very problems it was promoted to prevent, in some people.

Now I have a lot of aches and pains but that is probably due to being a geezer, so I probably dodged the bullet there, but, any immunity Lymerix conferred is now non existent according to the CDC and others. On top of which, any Lyme test I have now, would probably show as positive because of the Lymerix.

Last year, in the spring, I took a few ladies out in the woods to collect some woodland plants to plant in their gardens at home. That night I found 2 ticks on me - the first time ever! I was so bugged (:rolleyes:) out that I pretty well stayed out of the woods for the balance of last year. This year, I said screw it - I'll take my chances.

Here's the thing that gets me. To protect yourself they say to check your body for ticks after a day in the woods (and elsewhere). Ixodes scapularis at certain stages are the size of the period at the end of this sentence. How do I, with my 62 year old eyesight, check for ticks on my ass, when I can't even see my ass (it is behind me, you know) and unlike Brad Paisley's love interest, I don't have anybody volunteering to check for me? To compound things, permethin is not approved for these things in Canada.

The upswing in the numbers of ticks is directly related to the number of hosts - White tailed deer being a major player in this regard. In the area I live in, we have an explosion in the White tailed deer population with little opportunity to hunt them with anything but your Chevy bumper, so, one more thing to blame on the antis!

Many thanks for listening to my rant!

Doc
 
My brother was diagnosed with lyme disease years ago. He had a number of ticks and got tested and the test came back positive- but not because of the ticks that were on him, but rather from some previous exposure (6 months or prior IIRC). He had no symptoms, except for possibly some minor aches that may or may not have been related. No rash, no nothing. He was still perscribed the anti-biotics regimin.
 
Foilist, glad to hear you're on the mend. Guys, remember that our canine companions are susceptible to Lyme disease as well. I spoke with a guy a year or so back that contracted Babesiosis (mostly likely from a tick) and lost almost thirty pounds in ten days. Bad stuff, and it is moving north.
 
With our significant and on-going experience, we have come to a couple of conclusions:

1) We have the ability to be fairly self-sufficient on our property, but in the absence of anti-biotics, Lyme would do a real number on us over time...

2) The current testing/screening process for Lyme is pretty flawed, especially for anybody who has already tested positive. There is no real interest in developing a vaccine by drug companies, because of bad experience in the European market, and they view it as a disease that is easily treatable.

We check our kids and ourselves, but finding them all is a real challenge and we really enjoy living in the country and be being outside, so we just try to manage it.
 
I got "the bug" about three years ago, but it took about 8 months to diagnose, even with the rash and the tick that caused the rash. (I tossed the tick when I found it.)

Diagosis was nearly impossible as its not too common here, and few doctors are willing to treat for it. No one here seems to believe you can get it from anything but deere ticks, and since deer ticks haven't been here much in the past, very little research has been done in the midwest. (Our whitetail population is exploding, BTW.)

I did doxy for about a year, and it helped a ton, but my digestive system took a beating from the antibiotics. Extreme fatigue, fever and joint pain are still an issue, but it sure beats the way I was before antibiotics.

This stuff is nothing to mess with, as it can really wreck your day.......get treated early!
 
It's not common here (WV) although in my job reviewing medical charts I've seen a few people with it. Main problem here is a lot of Md's refuse to test for it because they say it's not here at all.

The small deer ticks aren't too common here. I've seen them on deer I have killed in warm weather, on groundhogs dogs have killed, but I don't think I've ever seen one on me, but they're small....

However every single friend I have from NJ who does much hiking or even woods walking has had it at least once.
 
hollowdweller said:
It's not common here (WV) although in my job reviewing medical charts I've seen a few people with it. Main problem here is a lot of Md's refuse to test for it because they say it's not here at all.

The small deer ticks aren't too common here. I've seen them on deer I have killed in warm weather, on groundhogs dogs have killed, but I don't think I've ever seen one on me, but they're small....

However every single friend I have from NJ who does much hiking or even woods walking has had it at least once.
Click to expand...

If the deer ticks are not common there, count your blessings. I just came back from about 3 months in VA. At least where I was, you would be hard pressed NOT to come up with a tick after doing push-ups in the grass or taking a jog through the woods. The doc told me that that is how he knows spring has arrived in VA--every other person in urgent care is there for a tick issue or a poison ivy issue. And of course, the deer population is going crazy as well.
 
Deer everywhere. Our local lake is alongside a highway, the fringe of woods is so narrow you can see through it, but the deer are so plentiful, they stand on the trail and stare at you. Not even the fawns are afraid.

Poison ivy is our municipal flower. I have to assume ticks are the municpal "bird". Even when I lived in NYC, I used to scrub down thoroughly when I came home from the woods, as soon as I came home.

Anyway, I hope you all heal up fast and stay well. SOMEBODY has got to convince doctors that rare does not mean absent!
 
I thought there was no real cure for Lyme.. That after you get it all you can do is stay on top of it and thats about it.... Someone please educate me as we starting to get lots of ticks out here now...

Sasha
 
The proper course of antibiotics at the start will eliminate it. Wait too long and it becomes chronic, and all you can do is suppress symptoms. WebMD probably has a good write up on it.
 
Deer everywhere. Our local lake is alongside a highway, the fringe of woods is so narrow you can see through it, but the deer are so plentiful, they stand on the trail and stare at you. Not even the fawns are afraid.

Poison ivy is our municipal flower. I have to assume ticks are the municpal "bird".
Click to expand...

Deer love to eat poison ivy. Look and see if most of the leaves are stripped except for beyond the deers reach (assuming that the vines grow up the trees).
 
on CTV national news tonight (here in Canada) there is a news item about lyme disiese , ticks and actual pictures of what it does in the brain.
 
I guess I'm lucky in that respect. Ticks are fairly common in the lower elevations around here, but pretty rare up high where I usually go. And we have an ally in a local lizard that acts as an intermediate host. It has a natural immunity to lyme, and kills the lime in the ticks while they are feeding on the lizard. Lyme is pretty uncommon around here.
 
The first tick I found on me got flushed (repulsed reaction). This is the second one (May 25, 2007). The ruler's scale is millimetres.
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Doc
 
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